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'When The Knife touches The Plate...only the meat is cut' - Chinese Proverb

I don't care for discussions on the fairness of business. Business isn't fair. Never has been and never will be.

Its a process in which grown men & women seek to justify their child-like behaviour as something which has a 'higher purpose' but in effect is nothing different from them owning the football and deciding who can and cannot play with all the other kids. Some of you will get picked last, in fact, in the end ALL consumers are 'getting picked last'.

This month's ball is 'Net Neutrality' and rarely does the tech community pass up the chance to get upset over the freedoms that the net/web has to offer. Or rather, it gets upset over what it perceives the net is all about and what freedoms it believes it has.

Each side has its own discussion points and sales pitches to decide the issue in your minds.

The Content Providers, who are getting and going to continue to get, bent over by ISPs, want you to use emotive words like 'Utility' and  give you speeches about ...'giving Americans an equal chance' (I have some sympathy with the last point but not the first)

The ISPs want to bleat about how expensive it is to maintain the huge demand for internet that wasn't there when they laid the last lot of infrastructure and if they don't do this 'restriction of high demand packets' they will have to 'charge you more and your paying enough already' (your cellphone providers do the same and again I do have some sympathy with this although provision of a substandard service to start with whilst a company is paying a dividend to shareholders on huge profits sticks in my throat more than a little)

Well here's where The Knife meets The Plate and the only thing that is cut is YOU.

This is a game where corporations are looking to offset who looks bad to the consumer. The ISP charges The Content Provider who has no option but to charge the consumer but never mind, the consumer only sees there content providers bill going up and they look bad.

But here's whats really happened. You wanted running water and someone built a huge dam and then opened the gates and flooded rivers that were built for rain water and the dam builder has spent all their money building the dam and paying for someone to fill it with water. They already charged you for the water but didn't pay anyone for the upgrade of the river and the people who maintain the river have charged you for maintaining the river but...well enough with the analogies.

The core issue is that the people in government who should protect you probably have shares in the river firm or the dam builder or the people filling the dam or are paid and lobbied by one or all 3 and won't get re-elected if they rock the boat too hard. THEY should be the Meat and actually your government are way closer to, or even ARE The Knife and The Plate.

A wiser man than me once said "A Government by the Corporation FOR the Corporation"...I think

Ewen

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Ewen Rankin

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